Clementina went to bed a happier woman than she had been for many a day.
Distrusting the ministrations of the Chinese nurse, she had set up a
little bed for Sheila in her own room. The child lay there fast asleep,
the faithful Pinkie projecting from a folded arm in a staring and
uncomfortable attitude of vigilance. Clementina’s heart throbbed as she
bent over her. All that she had struggled for and had attained, mastery
of her art, fame and fortune, shrank to triviality in comparison with
this glorious gift of heaven. She remembered scornful words she had once
spoken to Tommy: “Woman has always her sex hanging round the neck of her
spirit.” She recognised the truth of the saying and thanked God for it.
She undressed very quietly and walked about the room in stocking-feet,
feeling a strange sacredness in the presence of the sleeping child.
She was happier, too, in that she had forgiven Quixtus; for the first
time since she had known him she felt a curiosity regarding him, a
desire for his friendship; scarcely formulated, arose a determination to
bring something vital into his life. As the notable housewife entering a
forlorn man’s neglected house longs to throw open windows, shake
carpets, sweep down cobwebs, abolish dingy curtains, and fill the place
with sunlight and chintz and other gaiety, so did Clementina long to
sweep and garnish Quixtus’s dusty heart. He had many human
possibilities. After all, there must be something sound in a man who had
treasured in his mind the memory of her picture. Sheila and herself,
between them, would transform him into a gaunt angel. She fell asleep
smiling at the thought.
Clementina did not suffer fools gladly. That was why, thinking Quixtus a
fool, she had not been able to abide him for so many years. And that was
why she could not abide the fat Chinese nurse, who showed herself to be
a mass of smiling incompetence. “The way she washes the child makes me
sick,” she declared. “If I see much more of her heathen idol’s grin,
I’ll go mad and bite her.” So the next day Clementina, with Quixtus as a
decorative adjunct, hunted up consular and other authorities and made
with them the necessary arrangements for shipping her off to Shanghai,
for which she secretly pined, by the next outward-bound steamer. When
they got to London she would provide the child with a proper Christian
nurse, who would bring her up in the fear of the Lord and in habits of
tidiness; and in the meanwhile she herself would assume the
responsibility of Sheila’s physical well-being.
“I’m not going to have a flighty young girl,” she remarked. “I could
tackle her, but you couldn’t.”
“Why should I attempt to tackle her?” asked Quixtus.
“You’ll be responsible for the child when she stays in Russell Square.”
“Russell Square?” he echoed.
“Yes. She will live partly with you and partly with me—three months
with each of us, alternately. Where did you expect the child to live?”
“Upon my soul,” said he, “I haven’t considered the matter.
Well—well——”
He walked about the vestibule, revolving this new and alarming
proposition. To have a little girl of five planted in his dismal,
decorous house—what in the world should he do with her? It would
revolutionise his habits. Clementina watched him out of a corner of her
eye.
“You didn’t suppose I was going to have all the worry, did you?”
“No, no,” he said hastily. “Of course not. I see I must share all
responsibilities with you. Only—won’t she find living with me rather
dull?”
“You can keep a lot of cats and dogs and rocking-horses, and give
children’s parties,” said Clementina.
Sheila, who had been apparently absorbed in the mysteries of the
Parisian toilet of a flaxen-haired doll which Clementina had bought for
her at an extravagant price, cheerfully lifted up her face.
“Auntie says that when I come to stay with you, I’m to be mistress of
the house.”
“Indeed?” said Quixtus.
“And I’m to be a real lady and sit at the end of the table and entertain
the guests.”
“I suppose that settles it?” he said, with a smile.
“Of course it does,” said Clementina, and she wondered whether his
masculine mind would ever be in a condition to grasp the extent of the
sacrifice she was making.
That day the remains of Will Hammersley were laid to rest in the little
Protestant cemetery. The consular chaplain read the service. Only the
two elders stood by the graveside, thinking the ordeal too harrowing for
the child. Clementina wept, for some of her wasted youth lay in the
coffin. But Quixtus stood with dry eyes and set features. Now he was
sane. Now he could view life calmly. He knew that his memory of the dead
would always be bitter. Reason could not sweeten it. It were better to
forget. Let the dead past bury its dead. The dead man’s child he would
take to his heart for her own helpless, sweet sake. Should she, in years
to come, turn round and repay him with treachery and ingratitude, it
would be but the way of all flesh. In the meanwhile he would be loyal to
his word.
After the service came to a close he stood for a few moments gazing into
the grave. Clementina edged close to him and pointed down to the coffin.
“He may have wronged you, but he trusted you,” she said in a low voice.
“That’s true,” said Quixtus. And as they drove back in silence, he
murmured once or twice to himself, half audibly:
“He wronged me, but he trusted me.”
That evening they started for Paris.
Undesirous of demonstrative welcome at half-past eight in the morning,
Clementina had not informed Tommy and Etta of the time of her arrival,
and Quixtus had not indulged in superfluous correspondence with Huckaby.
The odd trio now so closely related stood lonely at the exit of the
Lyons Station, while porters deposited their luggage in cabs. Each of
the elders felt a curious reluctance to part—even for a few hours, for
they had agreed to lunch together. Sheila shed a surprised tear. She had
adjusted her small mind to the entrance of her Uncle Ephraim into her
life. The sudden exit startled her. On his promising to see her very
soon, she put her arms prettily round his neck and kissed him. He drove
off feeling the flower-like pressure of the child’s lips to his, and it
was very sweet.
It helped him to take up the threads of Paris where he had left them, a
difficult task. Deep shame smote him. What could be henceforward his
relations with Huckaby whom, with crazy, malevolent intent, he had
promised to maintain in the path of clean living? With what self-respect
could he look into the eyes of Mrs. Fontaine, innocent and
irreproachable woman, whose friendship he had cultivated with such
dastardly design? She had placed herself so frankly, so unsuspectingly
in his hands. To him, now, it was as unimaginable to betray her trust as
to betray that of the child whose kiss lingered on his lips. If ever a
woman deserved compensation, full and plenteous, at the hands of man,
that was the woman. An insult unrealised is none the less an insult; and
he, Quixtus, had insulted a woman. If only to cleanse his own honour
from the stain, he must make compensation to this sweet lady. But how?
By faithful and loyal service.
When he solemnly reached this decision I think that more than one angel
wept and at the same time wanted to shake him.
And behind these two whom he would meet in Paris, loomed the forbidding
faces of Billiter and Vandermeer. He shivered as at contact with
something unclean. He had chosen these men as ministers of evil. He had
taken them into his crazy confidence. With their tongues in their
cheeks, these rogues had exploited him. He remembered loathsome
scenarios of evil dramas they had submitted. Thank Heaven for the
pedantic fastidiousness that had rejected them! Billiter, Vandermeer,
Huckaby—the only three of all men living who knew the miserable secret
of his recent life! In a rocky wilderness he could have raced with wild
gestures like the leper, shouting “Unclean! Unclean!” But Paris is not a
rocky wilderness, and the semi-extinct quadruped in the shafts of the
modern Paris fiacre conveys no idea of racing.
Yet while his soul cried this word of horror, the child’s kiss lingered
as a sign and a consecration.
The first thing to do was to set himself right with Huckaby.
Companionship with the man on the recent basis was impossible. He made
known his arrival, and an hour afterwards, having bathed and
breakfasted, he sat with Huckaby in the pleasant courtyard of the hotel.
Huckaby, neat and trim and clear-eyed, clad in well-fitting blue serge,
gave him the news of the party. Mrs. Fontaine had introduced him to some
charming French people whose hospitality he had ventured to accept. She
was well and full of plans for little festas for the remainder of their
stay in Paris. Lady Louisa had found a cavalier, an elderly French
marquis of deep gastronomic knowledge.
“Lady Louisa,” said he with a sigh of relief and a sly glance at
Quixtus, “is a charming lady, but not a highly intellectual companion.”
“Do you really crave highly intellectual companions, Huckaby?” asked
Quixtus.
Huckaby bit his lip.
“Do you remember our last conversation?” he said at last.
“I remember,” said Quixtus.
“I asked you for a chance. You promised. I was in earnest.”
“I wasn’t,” said Quixtus.
Huckaby started and gripped the arm of his chair. He was about to
protest when Quixtus checked him.
“I want you to know,” said he, “that great changes have taken place
since then. I left Paris in ill-health, I return sound. I should like
you to grasp the deep significance underlying those few words. I will
repeat them.”
He did so. Huckaby looked hard at his patron, who stood the scrutiny
with a grave smile.
“I think I understand,” he replied slowly. “Then Billiter and
Vandermeer?”
“Billiter and Vandermeer I put out of my life for ever; but I shall see
they are kept from want.”
“They can’t be kept from wanting more than you give them,” said Huckaby,
whose brain worked swiftly and foresaw blackmail. “You must impose
conditions.”
“I never thought of that,” said Quixtus.
“Set a thief to catch a thief,” said the other bitterly; “I’m telling
you for your own good.”
“If they attempt to write to me or see me, their allowances will cease.”
He covered his eyes with his hand, as though to shut out their hateful
faces. There was a short silence. Huckaby’s lips grew dry. He moistened
them with his tongue.
“And what about me?” he asked at last.
Quixtus drew away his hand with a despairing gesture, but made no reply.
“I suppose you’re right in classing me with the others,” said Huckaby.
“Heaven knows I oughtn’t to judge them. I was in with them all the
time”—Quixtus winced—“but I can’t go back to them.”
“My treating you just the same as them won’t necessitate your going back
to them.”
Huckaby bent forward, quivering, in his chair. “As there’s a God in
Heaven, Quixtus, I wouldn’t accept a penny from you on those terms.”
“And why not?”
“Because I don’t want your money. I want to be put in a position to earn
some honourably for myself. I want your help as a man, your sympathy as
a human being. I want you to help me to live a clean, straight life. I
kept the promise, the important promise I made you, ever since we
started. You can’t say I haven’t. And since you left I’ve not touched a
drop of alcohol—and, if you promise to help me, I swear to God I never
will as long as I live. What can I do, man,” he cried, throwing out his
arms, “to prove to you that I’m in deadly earnest?”
Quixtus lay back in his chair reflecting, his finger-tips joined
together. Presently a smile, half humorous, half kindly, lit up his
features—a smile such as Huckaby had not seen since before the days of
the hostless dinner of disaster, and it was manifest to Huckaby that
some at least of the Quixtus of old had come back to earth.
“In the last day or two,” said Quixtus, “I have formed a staunch
friendship with one who was a crabbed and inveterate enemy. It is Miss
Clementina Wing, the painter, whom you saw, in somewhat painful
circumstances, the other day at the tea-room. I will give you an
opportunity—I hope many—of meeting her again. I don’t want to hurt
your feelings, my dear Huckaby—but so many strange things have happened
of late, that I, for the present, mistrust my own judgment. I hope you
understand.”
“Not quite. You don’t mean to tell——”
Quixtus flushed and drew himself up.
“After twenty years, do you know me so little as that?”
“I beg your pardon,” said the other humbly.
Again Quixtus smiled, at a reminiscent phrase of Clementina’s.
“At any rate, my dear fellow,” said he, “even if she doesn’t approve of
you, she will do you a thundering lot of good.”
At the smile Huckaby took heart of grace; but at the same time the
memory of Clementina, storming over the tea-table, for all the world
like a French revolutionary general, filled his soul with wholesome
dismay. Well, there was no help for it; he must take his chance; so he
filled a philosophic pipe.
A little later Quixtus met the spotless flower of womanhood whom he had
so grievously insulted. She greeted him with both hands outstretched.
Without him Paris had been a desert. Why had he not sent her the
smallest, tiniest line of news? Ah! she understood. It had been a
sojourn of pain. Never mind. Paris, she hoped, would prove to be an
anodyne. Only if she would administer it in the right doses; said
Quixtus gallantly. Dressed with exquisite demureness, she found favour
in his sight. He realised with a throb of thanksgiving that henceforward
he could meet her on equal terms—as an honourable gentleman—no
grotesque devilry haunting the back of his mind and clouding the
serenity of their intercourse.
“Tell me what you have been doing with yourself,” she said, drawing him
to a seat. The little air of intimacy and ownership so delicately
assumed, captivated the remorseful man. He had not realised the charm
that awaited him in Paris.
He touched lightly on Marseilles happenings, spoke of his guardianship,
of Sheila, of her clinging, feminine ways, drew a smiling picture of his
terror when Clementina had first left him alone with the child.
Mrs. Fontaine laughed sympathetically at the tale, and then, with a
touch of tenderness in her voice that perhaps was not deliberate, said:
“In spite of the worries, you have benefited by the change. You have
come back a different man.”
“In what way?”
“I can’t define it.”
“Try.”
A quick glance met earnest questioning in his eyes. She looked down and
daintily plucked at the sunshade across her lap.
“I should say you had come back more human.”
Quixtus’s eyelids flickered. Clementina had used the same word. Was
there then an obvious transformation from Quixtus _furens_ to Quixtus
sane?
He remembered the child’s kiss. “Perhaps it’s my new responsibilities,”
he said with a smile.
“I should so much like to see her. I wonder if I ever shall,” said Mrs.
Fontaine.
“She is coming here to lunch with Miss Wing,” replied Quixtus, eager now
that his good friends should know and appreciate each other. “Won’t Lady
Louisa and yourself join us?”
“Delighted,” said Mrs. Fontaine. “Miss Clementina Wing is quite a
character. I should like to see more of her.”
Quixtus, his mind full of sweet atonement, did not detect any trace of
acidity in her words.
On the stroke of one, the time appointed for luncheon, Clementina and
Sheila appeared at the end of the long lounge, Tommy and Etta straggling
in their wake. Quixtus rose from the table where his three friends were
seated, and advanced to meet them. Sheila ran forward and he took her in
his arms and kissed her.
“You didn’t ask these children to lunch, but I brought ’em.”
“They’re very welcome,” said Quixtus, smiling.
Tommy, his fair face aflame with joy, wrung his hand. “I told you I
would look you up in the Hôtel Continental. By Jove! I am glad to see
you. I’ve been an awful ass, you know. Of course I thought——”
“Hush! Hush!” said Quixtus. “My dear Miss Concannon, I am delighted to
see you.”
“She goes by the name of Etta,” said Tommy, proudly.
Clementina jerked her thumb towards them:
“Engaged. Young idiots!”
“My dear Miss Etta,” said Quixtus, taking the hand of the furiously
blushing girl—“My friend, Tommy, is an uncommonly lucky fellow.” He
nodded at Sheila, who hung on to his finger-tips. “Have you made friends
with this young lady?”
“She’s a darling!” cried Etta.
“Clementina,” said Tommy, “you’re a wretch. You shouldn’t have given us
away.”
“You gave yourselves away, you silly geese. People have been grinning at
you all the time you were walking here.” Then her glance fell upon the
expectant trio a little way off. “Oh Lord!” she said, “those people
again!”
“They’re my very good friends,” said Quixtus, “and I want you to meet
them again in normal circumstances. I want you to like them.”
He looked at her in mild appeal. Clementina’s lips twisted into a wry
smile.
“All right,” she said. “Don’t worry. I’ll be civil.”
So it came to pass that the two women again faced each other; Mrs.
Fontaine all daintiness and fragrance in her simple but exquisitely cut
fawn costume, the chaste contours of her face set off by an equally
simple ten-guinea black hat with an ostrich feather; Clementina, rugged,
powerful, untidy in her ill-fitting mustardy brown stuff skirt and
jacket, and heavy, businesslike shoes; and again between the two pairs
of eyes was the flicker of rapiers. And as soon as they were disengaged
and Clementina turned to Lady Louisa, she felt the other’s swift glance
travel from the soles of her feet to the rickety old rose in her hat.
There are moments when sex gives a woman eyes in the back of her head.
She turned round quickly and surprised the most elusive ghost of a smile
imaginable. For the first time in her life Clementina felt herself at a
disadvantage. She winced; then mentally, so as to speak, snapped her
fingers. What had she to do with the woman, or the woman with her?
All the presentations having been made, Quixtus led the way to the
restaurant of the hotel.
“Clementina,” said he, “may I ask you to concede the place of honour for
this occasion to my unexpected but most charming and most welcome
guest?”
He indicated Etta still blushing into whose ear Tommy whispered that his
uncle always spoke like a penny book with the covers off.
“My dear man,” said Clementina, “stick me anywhere, so long as it’s next
the baby and I can see that nobody feeds her on anchovies and lobster
salad.”
She understood perfectly. The second seat of honour was Mrs. Fontaine’s.
She confounded Mrs. Fontaine. But what was Mrs. Fontaine to her or she
to Mrs. Fontaine?
They took their places at the round table laid for eight. On Quixtus’s
right, Etta; on his left, Mrs. Fontaine; then Sheila, somewhat awed at
the grown-up luncheon party and squeezing Pinkie very tight so as to
give her courage; then Clementina with Huckaby as left-hand neighbour;
then Lady Louisa, and Tommy next to Etta.
Clementina kept her word and behaved with great civility. Tommy politely
addressed Lady Louisa to the immense relief of Huckaby, who thus
temporarily freed from his Martha, plunged into eager conversation with
Clementina about her picture in the Salon, which had attracted
considerable attention. He did not tell her that, in order to refresh
his memory of the masterpiece, he had revisited the Grand Palais that
morning. He praised the technique. There was in it that hint of
Velasquez which so many portrait-painters tried for and so few got. This
pleased Clementina. Velasquez was the god of her art. One bright space
in her dreary youth was her life with Velasquez in Madrid.
“I too once tried to know something about him,” said Huckaby. “I wrote a
monograph—a wretched compilation only—in a series of Lives of Great
Painters for a firm of publishers.”
Hack work or not, the authorship of a Life of Velasquez was enough to
prejudice her in Huckaby’s favour. She learned, too, that he was a
sometime Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and a university
contemporary of Quixtus. Huckaby, finding her not the rough-tongued
virago from whom Quixtus had always shrunk, and of whom, at their one
meeting in the tea-room, he, himself, had not received the suavest
impression, but a frank, intelligent woman, gradually forgot his anxiety
to please and talked naturally as became a man of his scholarship. The
result was that Clementina thought him a pleasant and sensible fellow,
an opinion which she expressed later in the day to Quixtus.
With regard to Mrs. Fontaine, her promise of ladylike behaviour was
harder to keep. All through the meal her dislike grew stronger. That
Quixtus should bend towards Etta, in his courtly fashion, and pay her
little gallant attentions, was but natural; indeed it was charming
courtesy towards Tommy’s betrothed; but that he should do the same to
Mrs. Fontaine and add to it a subtle shade of intimacy, was
exasperating. In the lady’s attitude, too, towards Quixtus, Clementina
perceived an air of proprietorship, a triumphant consciousness of her
powers of fascination. When Quixtus addressed a remark across the table
to Clementina, Mrs. Fontaine adroitly drew his attention to herself. Her
manner gave Clementina to understand that, although a frump of a
portrait painter might be an important person in a studio, yet in the
big world outside, the attractive woman had victorious pre-eminence. Now
Clementina was a woman, and one whose nature had lately gone through
unusual convulsions. She found it difficult to be polite to Mrs.
Fontaine. Only once was there a tiny eruption of the volcano.
Sheila’s seat at the table being too low for her small body, Clementina
demanded a cushion from the maître d’hôtel. When, after some delay, a
waiter brought it, she was engaged in talk with Huckaby. She turned in
time to see Mrs. Fontaine about to lift Sheila from her seat. With a
sudden, rough movement she all but snatched the child out of the other’s
arms, and herself saw to Sheila’s sedentary comfort.
She didn’t care what Quixtus or any one else thought of her. She was not
going to have this alien woman touch her child. The hussy flirtation
with Quixtus she could not prevent. But no woman born of woman should
come between her and the beloved child of her adoption.
The incident passed almost unnoticed. The meal ended pleasantly. With
the exception of the two women in their mutual attitude, everybody was
surprisedly delighted with everybody else. Etta thought Quixtus the very
dearest thing, next to Admiral Concannon, that had ever a bald spot on
the top of his head. Clementina, in a fit of graciousness, gave Huckaby
the precious freedom of her studio. He could come and look at her
pictures whenever he liked. Sheila, made much of, went away duly
impressed with her new friends. Quixtus rubbed his hands at the success
of his party. The apparently irreconcilable were reconciled,
difficulties were vanishing rapidly, his path stretched out before him
in rosy smoothness.
But Tommy’s quick eyes had noticed the snatching of Sheila.
“Etta,” said he, “I’ve known Clementina intimately all these years, and
I find I know nothing at all about her.”
“What do you mean?” asked the girl.
“For the first time in my life,” said he, “I’ve just discovered that the
dear old thing is as jealous as a cat.”